Chuck Sweeny: Are the poor just a bunch of layabouts?

Do you ever get the impression that the U.S. is two distinct countries that not only don’t understand each other, but have their own news and opinion sources and never hear a point of view with which they disagree?

Do you ever get the impression that the U.S. is two distinct countries that not only don’t understand each other, but have their own news and opinion sources and never hear a point of view with which they disagree?

That’s what I’ve been thinking about since I wrote about St. Elizabeth Catholic Community Center in Thursday’s paper.

Remember? I talked about the Catholic Church’s historical view, being re-emphasized by Pope Francis, that charity is a fundamental tenet of Christianity.

Christian charity is why the early Church grew. In the Roman Empire, the Christians were the people who would help when you were sick, hungry and homeless. Their reputation got around quickly.

Diocese of Rockford Bishop David J. Malloy emphasized that responsibility in Thursday’s column, which also talked about the dire poverty affecting more and more people in Rockford because of the Rockford Recession, which seems to have no end in sight.

I’ve been observing the Rockford-area scene most of my life. When I was a teenager, Rockford was among the nation’s wealthy communities; everybody had good jobs and you didn’t have to finish high school to get one. Now we are among the nation’s poorer communities, so we have a lot of poor, out-of-work people.

Some people think of these folks as the problem, the infamous “47 percent” Mitt Romney called the takers from government in his speech last year to some 1 percenters. The idea that the only thing wrong with America is too many freeloaders on the government dole is widespread.

It was driven home to me last year at a posh dinner of wealthy folks to which I was invited. They were ecstatic that Paul Ryan, the would-be entitlement slayer, had just been named Romney’s vice presidential candidate.

That Ayn Randian, social Darwinist view of this country came through twice last week, first when I heard Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, say on “Meet the Press” that instead of Obamacare, people without health insurance should just get jobs that provide it.

I spoke Thursday at a local service-club lunch. I had a reverse news conference, where the audience asked me questions. These were not wealthy people, just hardworking guys from many occupations who get together to help their community.

But there was one question that floored me. It was about poverty and my St. Elizabeth column. Why are people lining up to get bags of food when there are Link cards? This questioner said he sees people who “load up two carts” with food at the grocery and pay with Link cards.

I don’t know, I said, knowing that you can’t feed a family on what a Link card provides. I said I was interested in the work going on there and in the bishop’s views on how the church addresses poverty — pretty much dodging his question because I wanted to remain polite.

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I tuned in to Rush Limbaugh’s show for a while Friday and listened to him have a rollicking good time making fun of a single mother who, in a news story, lamented the loss of her Women, Infants and Children money because of the government shutdown. How would she feed her “happy, fat baby?” el Rushbo asked mockingly.

In this view of America, the well-off are that way because they are hard workers, even if they inherited that wealth. The poor have no one but themselves to blame for their condition.

Here’s how Pope Francis viewed the same world last week.

The Guardian reported Friday that on a trip to Assisi, the home of his namesake, “Francis was visibly moved when he heard the stories of some of the poor people in the room.

‘Many of you have been stripped by this savage world that does not give employment, that does not help, that does not care if there are children in the world who are dying of hunger, does not care if so many families have nothing to eat,’ he said.

“He decried a world ‘that does not care about many people who have to flee poverty and hunger, flee seeking freedom and many times they find death.”